Thursday's map

A week full of family and friends left me no time for the map — but now I've finished a new ink copy. I probably won't be able to resist playing around with it on the computer while I wait for a few more pieces to fall into place before sending it to WingSpan.

Tuesday's map

I'm getting closer to the final map now, but I still plan to change the size of some images and retrace and rescan the whole thing before I submit it to the publisher.

See the Mearfaln near the Birdwoman's house?

The only two pieces I'm looking for at this point are a new title, a beautiful "MYTHACA", and a picture of the Birdwoman.

Monday's map

Thanks to Jeremy, Liam and Wyatt for the new pictures! I'm working on getting them all in. It'll take a little shuffling.

Saturday's map

This morning I switched to working in Photoshop mostly instead of doing so much by hand. First, I moved and resized a bunch of images in the Photoshop version of yesterday's map. When I liked the changes, I went back to tracing because I want the line weight to be the same all over the map. I finished the border by hand and then scanned the new version of the map. Now I've moved some of the images around with Photoshop again.

Pictures of the Mearfalm, Ivan on Magellan and Paracelsus flying are already in the mail, so if you're working on pictures for me, don't start on those. But do send along anything you've already started.

It occurred to me that asking for your work by August 14 is a stretch, so if I'll keep watching the mail until Thursday. The sooner I get your pictures, though, the more likely they are to be in the map.

Map progress

list of drawings still needed

If your kids—or some kids you know—are up for doing some drawing, this is a list of images I might have room for on the published map of Mythaca.

(Feel free to pass this list on to others who might like to help with the project. Anyone whose images I use for the map will be acknowledged in the book.)

The last day for me to receive pictures is August 14.


• Ivan on Magellan's back - a child's version of the cover image would work

• Marianna and the dog under the Great Tree - look at Josephine's drawing

• Paracelsus flying - a version of Josephine's drawing on the title page

• Icaria holding a set of wings

• Maya

• the hedge (look at the hedge hat on the last page of the book)

• any of the creatures that come out of the hedge

• any picture from the market scenes

• the Mearfaln

• the Birdwoman

• tatbirds


Send small but high resolution scanned images to
eveneuhaus@journeytomythaca.com

or mail black and white drawings to:

Eve Neuhaus
2031 McCollum St.
San Luis Obispo, CA 93405

Journey to Mythaca can be viewed on Google Books or downloaded at journeytomythaca.com. Or better yet, buy a print copy.

For more details, go to journeytomythaca.com or to my book blog.


Have fun drawing!

Mapping Mythaca

This is the map I'm working on for the next edition of Journey to Mythaca. It's made up of drawings from the book by kids who've read it.

The deadline for the project just crept up on me. Why didn't I get started before? Now I realize how good it would be to have a close-to-publishable map done a week from now.

Today I wanted to do a quick version of the entire project, to get an idea of what I'll need to think about, to see what tools or materials to look for, to get a vision of the whole, of its potential. And to see what I might — or might not — be able to get done in week.

I pulled up the scanned images of all the artwork kids sent. It's children's art, so every piece is full of magic. I chose a series of images I thought would work well as a group to tell the story of the Journey to Mythaca: each of the main characters, images of each setting (lots of trees). I didn't spend any time cleaning the images up; I just shrunk them down to about 2 square inches or smaller, lined them up on a few pages and printed them out.

I drew a border on a piece of vellum (the final map will have a beautiful border, but today it was just four lines) and then, using a light board, I started moving the images around under the vellum. When the position on the page looked reasonably logical, I traced the images onto the vellum with a not-very-good pen.

(I'm weighing whether to trace the images or not. How does a map made of images traced by the same hand in the same line weight compare to the exquisite wabi of the children's own work? I'm not sure which way I'll go, but so far my plan is to trace the children's work.)

Leah's wonderful map provides the basic framework, but the drawings of many artists are included on the map for the book. There are still spaces on the map that could be filled.

I don't have a picture of the birdwoman, for instance, or of the details of the market. How about Icaria flying? She's up there, but Star's Icaria should really be standing in the woods. And where's Ivan?

See the author section of the Journey to Mythaca website for details about where to send your drawings.

I can see that over the next few days, I'll be going back to the original drawings, scanning some more, and others better, photoshopping some, resizing some (probably more than once), and then cutting them up so I can use them like puzzle pieces. If I'd cut them up right off, there wouldn't be two ladders in the current draft.

I'm sure it would be possible, and probably not even hard, for me to learn how to do this on the computer, but I am enjoying the process of tracing by hand. It gives me the time to marvel at the grace of the children's work, the line of one wing, the curve of a branch; and at how adept they are at the intricacies of fantasy worlds.

My plan is to give this project the greater part of my time for the next week, then set it aside for a couple weeks, and complete it the last week of August.

I'll continue looking at kids' work with an eye toward including some, and posting whatever I get on the website. (To be realistic, I may not get to posting the work in the gallery until the fall.)

unexpected pleasure

It was on the plane from Denver to Oakland, I suppose, that I caught the rotten cold that's still keeping me up nights coughing and sent me to bed for two days when I should have been at the Mythcon - a big disappointment, since I'd prepared for it pretty thoroughly by reading books by Ellen Kushner and Delia Sherman as well as finishing the new Harry Potter in record time.

But there was no question of going either Saturday or Sunday. I had a genuine fever for the first time in years. I felt lucky to hole up in the guest room of my daughter's house in Berkeley where I could eat chicken soup from Saul's. Sunday afternoon I changed my reservation on the train home from Tuesday to Monday.

Who would have guessed that my dear friends Esther and John would be traveling on the same train. But there they were in the waiting room at Jack London, and what a lovely day we spent together!

We chatted for hours, read companionably, enjoyed the cafe manager's running commentary on the scenery, had a more than decent meal with a good wine, and even met a Chinese mathematician with a unified field theory to trade for John's. The sun set as we passed through the mountains.

It didn't make up for the excitement of the Mythcon, but as far as consolation prizes go, I couldn't have asked for more.

Windfall

My effort in generating votes for that useless contest turned out not to be useless at all — it generated a flurry of sales both on Amazon and through the J2M website.

A silver lining, indeed.